OK, time for me to rant. I saw this article before skel posted it, and it obviously drew my eyes. Running this site and Certified Security Professional, this clearly seemed like something I should read. But after seconds of looking at the article, I quickly realized that this type of reporting doesn't deserve for me to give it extra attention on this site. So I didn't post it. But, since someone else did, I now feel I have free reign to blast it. According to the article, 'Another Nail in the IT Certification Coffin,' it is reported that:

IT certifications are worth less than ever, and the value of non-certified technology skills has surged, according to the third-quarter edition of the "Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index" from Foote Partners, a New Canaan, Conn., IT workforce research firm, on Nov. 1.

These conclusions are totally off base. If you look at the graph, sure it shows a flattening of 'average premium pay as a % of base salary' (whatever that's supposed to mean), but it is not 'less than ever' and the graph clearly shows that having certs pays more than not having them. It just so happens that 'non-certified technology skills' were incredibly low, and they had nowhere else to go but up.

Something else to consider is that in the programming world, certifications are nowhere near as popular as other areas of IT. Look at when the non-certified skills were in demand... during the dot com boom. That's when programmers were making obscene salaries. But since then, certified skills are not only more steady, but earn more.

I guess during this election season, even the IT press is not beyond sensationalizing statistics to get some notice.

Don

Last edited by don on Mon Nov 06, 2006 11:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think in the area of IT Security customers view certification like a warm blanket. They are looking for people who have some training in incident response, best security practices, and investigative techniques. In some ways they are looking for a computer cop, and they know that cops need to have specialized training. So customers feel that their IT Security people should have specialized training.

The other question this article raises for me is a chicken/egg problem. Can we say for sure that non-certified skills pay more because certification is viewed poorly, or is it because these skills are valuable and there isn't a credible certification for them yet?

What if I developed a hot new programming language, Kevin++, that was so cool that you couldn't write bugs in the software and it worked on every operating system and you could write an application like Peoplesoft in about five minutes. This technology would be hot and companies would be paying top dollar to get people that can program in Kevin++. However, it would take a couple years to develop a certification path for Kevin++ and it would take a few more years for the certification to gain enough credibility that people would seek it out. So you could say that we have a non-certified skill that pays better than some certified skills...but that statistic isn't really reflecting the value of certification, is it?

mn_kthompson wrote:What if I developed a hot new programming language, Kevin++, that was so cool that you couldn't write bugs in the software and it worked on every operating system and you could write an application like Peoplesoft in about five minutes. This technology would be hot and companies would be paying top dollar to get people that can program in Kevin++. However, it would take a couple years to develop a certification path for Kevin++ and it would take a few more years for the certification to gain enough credibility that people would seek it out. So you could say that we have a non-certified skill that pays better than some certified skills...but that statistic isn't really reflecting the value of certification, is it?

If you can't write bugs in the software then every program and app will be perfect and programmers and Dev's can't make mistakes which means there will be no reason to train them and definitely no reason to certify them as there will be no difference between those with certs and those without them.

Certification comes to differentiate between those that supposedly know how to use the systems or program with fewer bugs, as opposed to those that don't or can't.

CEH, CCSA NG/AI, NNCSS, MCP, MCSA 2003

There are 10 kinds of people, those that understand binary, and those that don't.